ADAM MOWERY // 30 YEAR HEX

Two different artists making totally different sounds but creating very similar vibes in the process. ADAM MOWERY takes a base of breathy acoustic guitar and layers in 4 track bedroom psychedelic sensibilities where appropriate (fortunately, they are appropriate all over the place). Exceptionally laid back sounds suitable for candlelit nights or perhaps mood setting mix tapes for that special someone.

While I dig the acoustic side, the noisy lethargic garage goth from 30 YEAR HEX is much more my speed.  Painfully paced and gorgeously distorted brilliance, these are the miscreants that sat in the corner at the junior high dance, plotting all the glorious ways they could ruin your life. Like lost early FLAMING LIPS demos excavated and enjoyed without dusting off the years, this tape has...something. But luckily, it's the thing that tapes need to make them awesome.

30 YEAR HEX // ADAM MOWERY

RABIA

Noisy, raw and hopelessly brutal rehearsal recording from Japanese maniacs RABIA. This is the shortest post on Terminal Escape, with the possible exception of christmas day 2009. Dig in to the most chaotic 87 seconds of your life.

RABIA REHEARSAL 1993

RABID LASSIE

The late '80s were a bit of a musical wasteland. The DIY network was still it's infancy, and there were heaps of bands trying to leapfrog into superstardom (or some perceived notion of what that might be) off the backs of underground punk. Straight edge had taken a new form in New York City and in the San Francisco area a whole scene was sprouting up in virtually every warehouse that could house a few dozen sweaty punks. San Ramon is in the armpit of the Bay Area, sitting about halfway between Walnut Creek and Pleasanton...a cultural wasteland, but in 1988 it was still spitting distance from the burgeoning scene in Berkeley and forever in the suburban shadow of the vibrant punk legacy San Francisco forged just a few years earlier. Enter RABID LASSIE - ripping straight edge hardcore with all of the fury of early SF thrashing punk, but delivered in the style of GORILLA BISCUITS, INSTED and other second wave straight edge gems. Sadly, they never made it to wax, save for one MRR EP comp, but their two demos are packed with unpretentious and hopelessly infectious hardcore....this is the second, a self titled seven song banger from 1988. No cover art, as this came to me on a tape compiled by a Bay Area resident some 20+ years ago trying to share the US scene with a tape trading pen pal overseas...no need to share the other new East Bay band he championed, because I figure everyone here has heard OPERATION IVY, right?

RABID LASSIE

CRIMINAL CODE

I first heard CRIMINAL CODE in Seattle, they opened the NO STATIK/MARTYRDÖD show and I was suitably impressed. Driving and urgent punk, but drenched in flanged '80s guitars, like ADOLESCENTS gone hopelessly goth and awkwardly reigned in, I thought. And I liked it.  I bought a tape, figuring that the 3$ investment would bring boundless enjoyment to my ears...but it was blank. I saw them again in SF a few months later, sharing the stage with the equally awesome BIG CRUX - CRIMINAL CODE had a new drummer (a Reno denizen) who suited their style even better, and who played a less laid back and more ferocious role in the band, and all of a sudden I heard HÜSKER DÜ in their songs and I liked them even more. I bought their new EP and a second copy of the demo. The EP was good, but the demo...was blank. So naturally it was with much hesitation that I pressed play on this second cassette release, but thankfully my ears were rewarded by the leap of faith taken by my digits, and I was greeted with analog versions of the sounds that made me dig this band in the first place (and the second, for that matter) - call it shoegazing punk gone hardcore, or EFFIGIES and ARTICLES OF FAITH gone new wave, but these jams are a perfect combination of many of the styles that personified my adolescence and they are delivered with gusto. I eagerly await their forthcoming 12" slab, but let this blast tide you over.

LIVE ON SONIC REDUCER

Courtesy of the fine fellows in CRIMINAL CODE, here is their first demo which I have dutifully downloaded and then taped onto my previously purchased blank cassette for enjoyment during a future time when computers are understood to be the enemy to the world that they really are. 

2011 DEMO

EXTREME HARDCORE

Leaning more towards the DIY metal that was floating around the underground tape trading world and concentrating on bands from the South, Extreme Hardcore is a 90 minute excursion guided by cult hessians and determined small town thrashers. Texans DEAD HORSE start the party with three tracks - this band was just a whisper to us Oklahomans at the time, but their tracks hold up brilliantly. BLUCK, crossover maniacs TRANSGRESSION, and downtuned churning primitive death metal from Alabama's RANDOM CONFLICT continue the battle while raw noisy hardcore from RADIATION SICKNESS and SKELETAL EARTH wrap up the first round. After a 6 minute death metal opus from NOCTURNUS, Tennessee's FOREVER UNGRATICAL CORINARIC TECHNIKILATION (F.U.C.T. - whose Dimensional Depth Perception full length completely melted my high school mind some 20 years ago) blaze two bombastic burners that are worth the whole download and are followed up by ripping old school HC from fellow Tennessee denizens REDNECKS IN PAIN. CONFRONTATION dish out three tracks (one from their 1989 EP), and we take a trip to the Northeast for legendary weed thrashers EXIT 13 and PHLEGM, who offer three more each to close out the party. This comes from a time when snail mail was just simply mail and underground legends were born...and before the word Extreme had anything to to with sports.

EXTREME HARDCORE COMPILATION 1990

FUNERAL SHOCK

This band came out of nowhere just as I was leaving the Bay Area in 2002 and kicked the entire region in the dick. A crew of powerviolence veterans spewing spite filled bare bones hardcore punk might have been just what punk needed to knock people down a notch and get them out of their big boy britches. "Punk Ass Nitpick" starts with a creepy crawling riff that channels early LA and delivers with the unbridled fury of '80s Detroit, and then lurches forward for 20 seconds of rage before the guitar torture that makes up "Hang The Jury" kicks in. Six songs in just over seven minutes on the demo, FUNERAL SHOCK blew through a few singers and several vinyl slabs before packing it in. Members of DEADBODIESEVERYWHERE, SPAZZ and CAPITALIST CASUALTIES in case you still need convincing.

FUNERAL SHOCK

COLD LOVERS

Often, the best part of playing in a band is getting to see other bands, and this was the case a few weeks ago when NO STATIK played in Chicago. Naturally the show was awesome (after all, Sarah set it up so this should come as no surprise), MANIPULATION, NATURAL LAW and CREEM were all every bit as good as expected, and I was riding on a endorphin rush after my 30 degree post sunset dunk into Lake Michigan, but that night was all about COLD LOVERS. Half the members of FENCED and a few rockin' dudes make up this outfit, and as much as I love the demo you are about to hear, the live wall that crashed down upon me when this band played was exactly the reason I love punk. Chaotic and disjointed mid paced hardcore with distant and hollow female vocals competing for your undying affection with primitive and distorted single note lead guitar. This is no bullshit and total rule, and while I initially detected an absently introspective goth vibe from my first several listens to these songs (a vibe I admittedly struggle to detect after seeing them live) my ears now hear earnest and determined songs, plowing through me like a bulldozer - as much in your face as digging right into your heart. Best band...I wish half of the shit I heard was half this awesome.

COLD LOVERS

Get this tape: coldlovers(at)gmail(dot)com